A multicast is a transmission of data from a single source to multiple recipients.

Multicasting is similar to broadcasting, but only transmits information to specific users. It is used to efficiently transmit streaming media and other types of data to multiple users at one time.

Multicast cannot use the TCP protocol, because TCP is a connection-oriented protocol that assumes a connection between exactly two hosts. UDP is by far the most common protocol used for multicast.

In financial markets, multicast is often used as the underlying protocol to distribute high volume and low latency market data.

Related terms

Market Data
TCP (Transmission Control Protocol)
UDP (User Datagram Protocol)
Unicast